How To Build A Rage Gladiator- A Guide

[Apoca1ypse]

Last updated: 30th Jan 2013

There are essentially 3 main types of rage gladiators, predominantly defined by their weapon.

-2H rage doesnt attack as often, but lands some pretty huge critical hits with their 2-handed weapons.
-DW Speed rage attacks a lot with blades but they get less damage per hit.
-DW Power rage attack with axes and maces and are in between the other 2 styles.

Your base stats are pretty important. I would aim for the following.

2H rage

Strength >85 - responsible for damage and boosting most attack skills
Chi >75 - responsible for making your crits bigger and boosts most attack skills
Size >75 - responsible for giving you health. more is better. funny that :P

DW Power Rage

Strength >85 - responsible for damage and boosting most attack skills
Chi >75 - responsible for making your crits bigger and boosts most attack skills
Size >75 - responsible for giving you health. more is better. funny that :P

DW Speed Rage

Agility >85 - responsible for attacking lots and damage
Strength or Chi >75 - Needed for most rage skills
Size >75 - responsible for giving you health. more is better. funny that :P

having your other stats above 70 is a plus, but if not, at least make sure most of them are over 65.

now on to skills:

Tier 1:

Weapon Skill - Having a good weapon skill is key to fumbling it less and connecting with your opponent. 2H rage obviously takes 2 handed weapons. DW speed rage should go with swords and blades as those weapons are dependent on agility, and DW power rage should go with hammers and axes as those are strength based.

Barreling Attack - Knocks your opponent to the ground. This puts them further back in initiative order which is always a good thing. It does no damage however and doesnt always work. I'd avoid it.

Devastating Power - Passively boosts damage when you crit. I'm starting to become a big fan of this skill for 2H styles but the issue will be "what skill do I go without so I can have this?"

Tier 2:

Sunder Armor - activated attack that deals damage and reduces your opponent's armor on that spot. The latter means you can do more damage the next time you hit that spot.

Blood Drunk - bonus to offensive power which means a better change of getting crits.

Brute Force - passively reduces your opponent's defensive power, meaning it's easier to get good hits on them. It becomes very important at higher levels when warriors are carrying ridiculously heavy armor.

Tier 3:

Armor Agility - reduces initiative penalty your armor gives you and gives you a slightly better chance of deflecting your opponent's hits. It's pretty damn handy, especially for DW gladiators.

Rampage - activated attack that does some massive damage. A must for any rage style.

Adrenalin Rush - An activated attack that deals a little bit of damage and gives you ~60% damage resistance when the skill is maxed out. it's borderline OP. You know you want it ;)

Tier 4:

Crippling Might - Activated attack that cannot be deflected/redirected by your opponent's defensive skills. The damage isnt crazy, but tt's kinda nice when it means your opponent has a wasted skill trigger from time to time.

Heavy Scarring - Passive boost to your gladiator's armor. I like it because it is passive, but it isn't a must

Annihilate - passive boost to your damage against gladiators using a tank or parry strategy at the time. At the very top of the game it's been the difference between beating a defensive gladiator or getting thumped. Overall, it seems pretty necessary in the current metagame.

Tier 5:

Total Carnage - Passively boosts your damage and when maxed out, the skill lets you get more attacks. This is now my favourite skill. A must for just about any rage IMO. Be warned that TC requires total commitment to the rage tree however as you cannot unlock it until you have 85 skill trains in rage already.


so, there's a quick overview on the skills. regardless of build, there are a few key skills:

Weapon Skill
Brute Force
Rampage
Adrenalin Rush

so, there's a quick summary on the rage skills. The next post is my proposed build path for a pure rage gladiator :)

[Apoca1ypse]

Scale exponentially so having them at rank 10/10 will be significantly better. A glad with 10 maxed skills will outperform one with 11 skills at rank 9. When you're just starting off, I recommend the following path:

Weapon - 10 (it may take a while, but it's singly the most important skill for your gladiator)

This unlocks tier 2 so then I'd do the following:

Brute Force - 8
Sunder Armour - 8

**If you have the patience, get these to rank 10 as it will free up more points to higher tier skills later on. If you dont have the patience, do what's below**

Blood Drunk - 4 (DW styles)
Devastating Power - 4 (2H)

That will give you 30 skill points and access to tier 3.

Rampage - 8
Adrenalin Rush - 8
Armor Agility - 5

At that stage, you'll have 50 trains which is 5 short for tier 4. Going back to max out some skills (or just get to rank 9) can be handy. Recommended ones are below.

Brute Force
Adrenalin Rush
Rampage

You can be sneaky and put a dummy point into all your untrained rage skills (the ones that read 0/10) which will net you some skill points, but it isn't recommended as you have to use trophies to unlearn them later once Nate unlocks that feature again.

Once you have 55 skill points in rage, tier 4 is available. You're pretty free to do whatever you like at this stage, but I recommend the following as a starting point.

Crippling Might - 8
Heavy Scarring - 8

Then go back and start maxing out skills. Once you hit 90 trains in rage, you can unlock Total Carnage which is an amazing skill.

Notes:

- A generic pure bred rage build that does ok would be as follows:

Weapon - 10
Blood Drunk - 10*
Sunder Armor - 10
Brute Force - 10
Armor Agility - 10
Rampage - 10
Adrenaline Rush - 10
Crippling Might - 10
Heavy Scarring - 10*
Total Carnage - 10

* not essential and can be swapped for other skills you may want.

- You can also train up some more dummy skills, this time including War and Theatrics ones to speed up your access to the 100 skill point achievement which yields +250hp. If you want to get Total Carnage, DO NOT put skills into war or theatrics

- All the above has been for a pure rage build. I personally have not experimented much outside of the Rage tree. It is viable to make a speed rage with Gratuitous Violence from the theatrics tree to get some crazy bleed rates, and get Death From Above on your 2H glads, but keep in mind that that causes you to sacrifice skills elsewhere.

[Apoca1ypse]

OK, Time for strategy.

you start with 3 attacks:

Slash - blade weapons, so swords and daggers.
Bash - 2H weapons as well as 1H maces and axes
Lunge - lul wut?

As you level up, you'll unlock other fight styles, specifically berserk and kill shot.

Berserk - all out offense, giving more attacks and damage, but it tires you out quickly and gives no defense.

Kill Shot - dealing huge blows. It doesnt tire you out as quickly and allows for huge hits and some defense, but dont expect to swing often.


Early on, most fights are decided by who tires out first. As such, run your gladiator at 3 activity and 3 blood lust (3/3) and set your attack type to bash (2H), slash (DW swords) or bash (DW mace and axe)

Personally, I ran 3/3 till lvl 10 then upped it to 4/4 till lvl 15, and 5/5 till lvl 20.

I also set my 2H gladiators to 1/1 bash when really tired in the second strategy slot, which was changed to 3/3 killshot (once unlocked)

Only once my gladiator reached at least lvl 8 in weapon skill do I start to use Berserk. Why not sooner? Because tiring yourself out when you only fumble sucks nuts. Be advised that berserk eats endurance, so wind down your activity and blood lust a little if you need.

As you gain levels, feel free to up your activity and bloodlust. Just keep an eye on you endurance bar to gauge how fine a line you are running. If you start losing fights to exhaustion, add in some strategies that have lower activity and bloodlust that will trigger when you are tired.

Also, this is just a guide line, so feel free to change it up how you like. I still highly recommend 3/3 basic attack for the early levels though :)

next post: gear!

[Apoca1ypse]

GEAR!!

funnily enough, 2H ragers should have a 2H weapon and DW ragers are best off with a Broad swords or gladius as their goto. Daggers are viable later on if you are making a bleed build and utilizing the theatrics skill tree. If you are a DW rage, make sure to buy an offhand weapon to increase your damage output.

You'll notice that at the blacksmith, most items give you stat boosts. Look for items that pump your main stats (as outlined in the 1st post) as well as attack power, which is awesome till about lvl 25. After lvl 30, look more into pumping your important stats opposed to attack power. This is especially important for 2H rage.

Early on, around lvl 5, I suggest looking into getting a better main hand weapon. Dont worry too much about armor though. If you run DW rage, make sure you pick up an offhand weapon too to boost your damage output. Offhand weapons are recognised by saying "Offhand" in the description when you highlight them.

As for armor, green armor is worth getting after lvl 10 or 15 as that's when you start getting decent stat boosts for your money. If you're a new player, your early gold should go towards stable upgrades instead. If you're established and have free money, I wont hold it against you if you decide to get green armor earlier :P

Getting a Blue weapon early on can be really good. A lvl 10 blue weapon is equivalent to a lvl 15 green weapon (that 5 level buffer seems consistent all the way up the levels). I would not bother with upgrading to a blue suit of armor early on as it will become obsolete quickly and the stat boost wont be that significant. After lvl 30 when purple items are available, they certainly can boost your game, as can blue armor pieces.

Anyway, that's a very brief overview on gear, and also concludes my guide on rage gladiators. Hope it helps :)

[Apoca1ypse]

any questions, fire away. i probably forgot something, given it's 2am :P

also, DW rage isnt my forte so if any of the top DW rage managers feel I have something wrong, please let me know :P


lastly, can this get stickied?

[Eric]

Apoca1ype,

Thank you for this comprehensive guide. Nice job!

Nate and I have actually been discussing having some of the veteran players put together guides like this. Nice to see you beating us to the punch. Makes our job that much easier.

This type of information is invaluable to new players and can save them loads of trial and error time.

Thanks again,
E

[TwoDie]

I like it. Looks good. Might wanna add HOW exactly to proc. last stands ability to hit. eg : when i am very injured..... ect...

[Apoca1ypse]

just got back from a weekend out of town. cheers for the sticky eric :)

also, edited the last stand entry

[picolog]

i love these guides. helps me so much with making my new glads:)

[Apoca1ypse]

glad it helps :)

If there's anything you want clarity on etc, feel free to ask :D



also, I should probably update this at some point now that I have more experience with DW rage

[Apoca1ypse]

ok, updated all of this. I'm still working out how to incorporate race, but that's a little complex to work in currently IMO, and they require more testing. For now, stick with a human :P

[Temuri]

in all guides are ''learn at start weapon skill to 10'', realy how to learn it to 10 when at 5 lvl shance to learn is alerady 50%? and at 6 lvl sure it will so 35%.. any tips? with this way i will learn 10 lvl weapon skill at 25 lvl or so.. at 8-9 lvl skill shance to learn will maube 10%..

[OogWasFles]

I myself mostly level them up to lvl 7 or 8, depending on how I feel like. Currently my lvl 17 War glad has her weapon-skill at lvl 9 and I think I'm gonna stick to that till about lvl 20. But that's a war.... For a Rage (just got a new Rage glad, also my first) I think I'm gonna lvl it like this:
Weapon - 7
Brute Force - 3
Then
Weapon - 8
Brute Force -5
Sunder Armor - 5
And then I'll just see :P

[Apoca1ypse]

you should hit lvl 10 weapon skill between lvl 15 and 20. that's only a week or so now with the changes to tavern runs. lvl 9-10 is ~8% success rate on average, so yes it will be tough, but the benefit is that you can run higher activity/bloodlust and hit more often for higher damage.

If you chose to train just to lvl 8, which is the minimum i'd go, brute force is where your other points should be.

[Temuri]

atm hes 9 lvl DW urk with 6 lvl weapon, 5 lvl brutal force, 5 lvl blood drunk, 5 lvl sunder armor. 10/10 in acticity/brutal, arena results 25-1-3, will try now lvlup weapon ... still wasnt able buy some good gladiator, all time low in agility/stamina at market :(

[OogWasFles]

If he's low in Agility but high in Strength, you can try and run him Two-Handed? I personally only buy glads who cost more then 980 too, I recommend you the same. But sometimes there's this glad with incredible stats for a cheaper price... My main is such an example :D Also, since I've hit my 5 gladiators, I just started my new account. I think Im lucky with this start glad:
Str: 79 Int: 68
Agi: 61 Sta: 72
Siz: 72 Pres: 65
Chi: 81 (!!)

[BlkTmplr]

Tbh I'm not selling any of my current glads unless I see a massive 1k+ gold glad turn up and even then it better have some really well rounded stats, I don't even want to see one massive one, just everything over average. :) *Picky*

[Apoca1ypse]

Learn with what you have, and then apply it to a monster when one arrives.

[Kanade]

Unfortunately these monsters do not appear in the slave market fast enough, or just seem not to appear at all -_-

[Apoca1ypse]

yeah, them's the breaks. I look every day and have spent silly amounts of tokens on seeing new slaves. oh well.

I think i only have 1 glad worth over 1000gp. Rarg cost under 900 and came with 88 str. needless to say, he's only good for moving heavy shit and hitting things :p He still does ok though.



like I said, just run what you brung (yes, bad english, but it rhymes :3) and see how you go.

[BlkTmplr]

I feel like a lucky Stable Master now :D since I already have 3 glads over 1k gold. Yes, this is from Trophies on the slave market too.. Never found one without it being a refresh.

[Temuri]

eh starting loosing some fights in arena.. CANT FIND is alerady in champions at 17 lvl and many fights are now vs 35 lvls too.. hard..

[Aegiz]

Just started playing this game and it's amazing, really kudos to the creators.
Second This guide is pretty great, too bad i found it after failing 4 gladiators basicly.
I'm busy fixing, is it worth selling 4 and buying 4 new (with great stats?) and starting at level 1 with them? or just go max level (50?)
And maybe sell them then? My guess is sell them now.
Btw making a female only stable 3 rage (because rage is cool) 1 war and 1 theatre.

[Apoca1ypse]

i'd suggest keeping them and learning, then just selling them off gradually as you find nice glads for sale.

[Narol]

I would suggest to sell one and use the trophies you win to run through slaves batches until you find a really promising one...

Then if you have trophies left you can sell another and do a new search for a second good one...etc...

Once you have no trophies left, keep the "old" glads you have left but don't spend money on them and only use them to make money and trophies until you have enough trophies again to complete your team.

The old glads will be your moneymakers while you invest your money in buying good greens for your elite guys and you can sold them later when you find new worthy slaves... Keep on using every trophies you get on getting new slaves batches until you have a complete team of glads you like.

[WheelDraw]

If you have a gladiator that is a little low in some of the suggested stats would you recommend improving them or sticking to improving the skills?

Also, just in general how much do those starting stats help compared to a skill? Like I'm starting out and have some accomplishments that give +10 attack and others that give say +1 strength, about how do they compare to each other?

[Apoca1ypse]

1 str = 5-10 attack. that said, attack power is better early on

also if your stats are a little low, dont stress too much. you can still learn. also, skills before stats is the way to go for training imo.

[HipsterD]

In the end you want to find a slave with some really good stats that you will want to keep for the long haul. I think Narol's suggestion is a good one. I have one or two glads on both my teams that I will replace at some point, but right now I run them because I think it is way more fun to run a full team.

[Apoca1ypse]

Updated to include changes to item availability and that STR/PRES is better than STR/CHI for 2H rage.

[Blaster360]

This seems like a pretty good Rage build.

[sevenseas]

damn...i got the shaft,..:p building with outdated material

[Apoca1ypse]

so was i haha

[Apoca1ypse]

Ok, finally updated. Hope this helps some people :)

Cyn has also written up a quick guide (http://forum.pitofwar.com/showthread.php?1723-Rage-guide-for-the-new-updated-Rage-Specility) if anyone is interested

[Apoca1ypse]

Finally changed my notes about Annihilate. It's pretty needed in the current defense heavy metagame.

[Grimm357]

I just unlocked my 3rd Strategy slot (Lvl 14) What do you suggest for a new Fighting strategy? Currently running your aforementioned 4/4 and 3/3 Killshot.

[Apoca1ypse]

stick with bash or slash imo.

[Grimm357]

Sorry, I should have been more specific.

#1 Bash/4/Torso/Torso/4
#2 Killshot/3/Torso/Torso/3
#3 ----------------------

That's my current setup. Now that I have a #3 to work with, how should I incorporate it? Or do I ignore the 3rd strategy slot for now?

[Apoca1ypse]

Late answer, but incase another new player asks, what you have is fine.

Until lvl 20, I only ever use the 1st strategy slot. Once I have access to triggers for endurance, I use those too, so that I dont lose from exhaustion (Berserk eats endurance)

EG:

#1 Start of Fight: Berserk/5/Weapon Arm/Head/5
#2 When I am Very Tired: Bash/2/Weapon Arm/Head/2
#3 When I am Moderately Tired: Bash/4/Weapon Arm/Head/4

[Apoca1ypse]

Also, 2H weapons are now kicking ass since they got a tweek. It is perfectly viable in the top levels of the game now :)

[Cynaidh]

Hey Apoc,

Going to give the 2h build a try even though i said i'd never do it again :) Would you say Ahhnold's build is what i should shoot for?

Here is the glads stats i just picked up to try it with:

95-86-80-79-90-66-71 1150 gold (Adoede's formula puts him at 90 luck)

[Apoca1ypse]

Ahhnold's build seems to be quite effective, so go for it :D I am biased though :p

The other option is to swap armor movement for crippling might.



That glad seems solid. Str, Stam and Size are good, and the higher Int could serve you quite well too. That presence is a smidge low, but shouldnt be an issue tbh.

[Cynaidh]

ok cool, hmm interesting point about armor move and crippling might, not sure how i feel about that. Ya i am hoping the Int will help him get those 1st round rampage or AR's off.

[FrosteeFyre]

Thank you for this comprehensive guide, it's really helping me to shape my Rage glads into monsters, appreciate all the effort you put into this! :D